The stage lights have gone up in the Danforth Music Hall on the evening of October 19, 2011 and a few of the performers still mill about. The theatre’s employees toil away at cleaning the place up after a crowd of over 1,400 has dispersed. The loud voice of Angelo Tsarouchas bellows throughout the now mostly empty building. Walking with two other men, the burly Tsarouchas’s conversation seamlessly switches from English to Greek and back again without skipping a beat. It’s a perfect microcosm of the night’s entertainment.
Tsarouchas, along with six other comedians, performed as part of the 10th annual “Accent on Toronto”, a stand-up festival highlighting some of Canada’s most prominent ethnic comedians. The fact that “Accent on Toronto” heads into its second decade in 2012 attests to the last popularity of what can be a potentially volatile form of comedy.
Gilson Lubin, another of the night’s stand-ups, believes the attraction to this kind of comedy comes down to multiculturalism.
“Ethnic comedy has been huge now especially because of the mixing of our worlds and with the access to the Internet and all of this stuff,” says Lubin, 36, who was born in St. Lucia. “It’s so huge now that we learn about each other through comedy. So I think, now, it’s another way to learn about people, instead of the naïve perceptions that we had of each other.”
Ron Josol, a 37-year-old Toronto stand-up of Filipino descent, concurs with the assessment.
“I think ethnic comedy is funny because you’re talking about a generation of people who see life from a different perspective when you live in North America,” says Josol, a touring comedian who has performed all over the world. “(Often, it’s about) that person from another country now trying to assimilate or adapt to North American culture and it’s funny to see the transition, as much as it’s awkward sometimes.”
Though, the market for ethnic comedy is obvious, so are its pitfalls, namely the potential to greatly offend. Andre Arruda recognizes that the line needs to be treaded lightly.
“It’s probably one of the hardest things to do in comedy. It’s very difficult. Because you’ve got to be sure that you can make the joke without being too offensive. The thing about comedy is that you can be offensive, as long as it’s funny, depending on the audience,” says Arruda, a comedian of Portuguese descent who is also physically disabled. “If you see somebody in your audience of that race that you’re making fun of and the guy’s like ‘Wait a minute. You’re not of my race. You’re not my colour. How the hell do you know anything? What you’re saying is not true and therefore, offensive.’”
Josol recalls a time when he witnessed firsthand a fellow comedian run afoul of his audience after having offended them.
“I remember doing a show in China with Russell Peters and it was all ex-pats…this was like right before he blew up…and the crowd was so offended and he was like ‘Let me get this straight: you’re offended because I’m making fun of a race that you don’t even know about?’,” Josol explains. “And they were like ‘Yeah, because they’re not here to defend themselves.’ After, he was like ‘It’s not your problem. It’s my problem. To tell you the truth, I have a lot of friends and people from that culture who love what I do, but stop taking the right to defend people when you don’t have that right.’ If there’s a culture that will be offended, then have somebody from that culture speak for that culture.”
The worldwide popularity of Brampton’s Peters, whose jokes mostly relate to his experience as an Indo-Canadian, shows that there is money to be made in the ethnic brand of humour, but not all comics embrace it.
Toronto’s Frank Spadone, a veteran stand-up of almost 15 years admits to reluctance in relying on his Italian heritage for laughs.
“I had one (Italian) joke and it would always do amazing and club owners would like it, but I would do other, just observational stuff, and certain club owners, who were ethnic, would say to me, like Boris Cherniak, who owned Comedywood in Thornhill, ‘You should really exploit that’ and I’d say ‘Nah, nobody wants to hear about me being Italian’,” remembers Spadone. “But you know what? He was absolutely right. People do wanna hear that stuff. At first I didn’t want to be that Italian guy, but I’m so lucky that I am. It’s really made a niche for myself.”
Arruda feels that even if you don’t want to go into cultural comedy, it can be an elephant in the room and might be best to address it anyway.
“I make jokes about being short and disabled. If you see somebody with a feature that is unique, like say somebody of a certain ethnicity or a disabled person, that comedian has to at least make a few references to it,” says Arruda, whose stand-up moniker is “The AntiGiant.” “Acknowledge it and go ‘Alright, I’ve done that. Can we move on now? Because there’s more about me.’ I’m not going to do an entire 20-minute set without mentioning the fact I’m short or that I’m physically disabled. People will be frustrated.”
Even having had many positive experiences with his brand of humour, Josol knows that the sword of being a niche comedian can swing both ways.
“The hardest thing for me to do was a Filipino show with 10 Filipino comics on stage. I was number seven and by the time I was up, all my Filipino jokes had already been done,” says Josol. “So it just starts getting monotonous and nobody’s laughing anymore, so you have to change it up.”
Still, comics like Spadone revel in making a living doing what they love and entertaining audiences.
“People love learning and people love hearing about other people,” says Spadone. “You don’t wanna hear about yourself all the time. I’d be bored.”
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